


A Bird in the Hand Can Make a Big Damn Mess

by Dustbunnygirl



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-07
Updated: 2008-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-14 08:57:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8006881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title: A Bird in the Hand Can Make a Big Damn Mess<br/>Author Name: dustbunnygirl<br/>Fandom: Torchwood<br/>Pairing: Jack/Ianto<br/>Summary: Sometimes, even a bad day can turn out to be a good one. All it takes the right company.<br/>Rating: R-NC17ish<br/>Disclaimer: If I owned Jack and Ianto, they’d never get out of bed – except to fool around in the shower, or the kitchen, or the SUV, or the Archives, or… You get the picture. This is all for fun, not for profit, and I don’t get paid well enough to sue anyway.<br/>Word Count: 6,502<br/>Warnings: Vague spoilers for Countrycide and Adrift. Also? Little bit cracky. <br/>Betas: legal_padawan<br/>Written for the Summer 2008 round of thestopwatch for thisbedear</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Bird in the Hand Can Make a Big Damn Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Title: A Bird in the Hand Can Make a Big Damn Mess  
> Author Name: dustbunnygirl  
> Fandom: Torchwood  
> Pairing: Jack/Ianto  
> Summary: Sometimes, even a bad day can turn out to be a good one. All it takes the right company.  
> Rating: R-NC17ish  
> Disclaimer: If I owned Jack and Ianto, they’d never get out of bed – except to fool around in the shower, or the kitchen, or the SUV, or the Archives, or… You get the picture. This is all for fun, not for profit, and I don’t get paid well enough to sue anyway.  
> Word Count: 6,502  
> Warnings: Vague spoilers for Countrycide and Adrift. Also? Little bit cracky.   
> Betas: legal_padawan  
> Written for the Summer 2008 round of thestopwatch for thisbedear

It was a beautiful Welsh day, filled with unexpected sunshine and not a single threat of rain or alien invasion in the sky. There were birds twittering in the goddamned trees, lovers strolling the quay hand in hand, and a general pervading sense that all was, finally, right with the world. Which, in retrospect, was all the proof Jack should’ve needed that somehow, someway, life was gearing up to break him twelve ways from Sunday and glue his pieces back together - backwards and upside down - before it was over. 

Nothing was ever “right with the world.” Reality just wasn’t built that way, and Jack knew that better than anyone.

If he’d been smart – which was how a hundred different harrowing tales of the great Captain Jack Harkness started – he would’ve barricaded his office door, leapt back into the hatch, pulled the covers firmly over his head, and told anyone that asked that he had no plans of emerging until tomorrow or the next day. Would have duct taped the hatch shut and prepared for Armageddon (if he could’ve managed to find what Ianto did with the duct tape after their last game of “Naughty Fun With Household Paraphernalia,” that is). It was the kind of encroaching doom-like feeling that drove oracles mad and had survivalists building bunkers in the Northern Montana wilderness and all Jack wanted to do was hide from it. The twitchy feeling in his bones that started the second he opened his eyes screamed for him to do exactly that, damn the consequences.

Unfortunately, none of the team seemed inclined to give their boss a “too scared to leave my hole” day, no matter how hard he begged or how cute his puppy dog look was. 

There were no specifics, of course (that wouldn’t be fair or fun), just a general sense of impending disaster that lingered through the first quiet cup of coffee in his office and gave every sip of Ianto’s special blend a bitter aftertaste. Disaster clung like a chill he couldn’t shake, painting everything with an odd, frantic sort of energy that left him twitchy. 

“Calm down already,” Gwen said with a huff of irritated breath as Jack fidgeted through her report on a UFO sighting the night before that turned out to really be a stray weather balloon for once. 

“Ianto cut you off?” Owen asked against the lip of his mug, eyebrows lifted in mildly lecherous intent. When a balled up Post-It ricocheted off his forehead and narrowly missed plopping into his heavily sugared cup, he glared at Jack. “Meant your coffee intake, mate. You’re twitching like a junkie who hasn’t had a hit in a week.”

“As I was saying,” Gwen interrupted, which earned her a grateful look from Ianto, “I think we need a better system for filtering out the false alarms. This is the third I’ve been to in two weeks!”

“Quit complaining,” Jack scoffed. “I’d rather have a false alarm than a fleet of Anterean battle cruisers any day. That was my definition of a bad night.” 

Gwen sunk into her chair with a frown. “You weren’t the one getting goosed by drunken uni brats all night.”

Jack grinned, his first of the day. “Now see, that would be my definition of a good night.”

Everyone groaned more or less in unison. Ianto rolled his eyes at the other end of the table. Jack winked at him and, for the first time since waking that morning, relaxed.

Which was, ironically enough, the exact moment the alarms decided to go off.

**

They were barely half an hour outside Cardiff before Owen started twitching. They’d hardly been out the Tourist Office’s door before the complaining started, though, and that hadn’t stopped a bit in the intervening time. If anything, Jack noted as he checked their progress on the SUV’s satnav, it had gotten worse the further they drifted from Owen’s definition of civilization.

“Middle of bloody nowhere, that’s what it is. Should just let the aliens or whatever have it. Nobody would miss it,” the doctor said as he readjusted his seatbelt for the fourth time in as many minutes. Gwen and Tosh had already confiscated every pen, wad of paper, and bit of lint from his person. They got tired of watching him fiddle with each consecutive item. 

“Explain to me again why it is we’re listening to you gripe the entire way?” Jack remained forward facing in the driver’s seat but cast a look back at Owen in the rearview mirror. 

“I’ve got a theory,” Ianto muttered, just low enough Jack was the only one who could hear it. 

“If you say it could be bunnies I’m taking away your Buffy DVDs,” was Jack’s reply, equally as low. 

“But bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes.”

“Ianto…”

“They’ve got those hoppy legs.”

“I’m warning you.”

“And twitchy little no – “

“Anyway,” Jack interrupted, louder this time. Ianto grinned. “What do we know about our location?”

“Llanfair Talhaiarn,” Tosh said over the constant clack of computer keys. “Population 980, give or take. Quaint and idyllic by most descriptions. Trouble seems to have started at a pheasant farm owned by an Alwyn Taylor.”

“And trouble is defined in this case as…”

“Undefined currently.” Tosh’s reflection offered a conciliatory shrug. “Still just reports of odd attacks and incidents all over town. Nobody was keen on providing further detail.”

“No surprise there,” Owen said as he kicked his toe against the console between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. “Probably a bird-worshipping cult or something. Countryside’s full of nutters. Learned that firsthand, didn’t we?”

“Stop it already.” Gwen’s head whipped away from its lean against the cool glass of the window and her view of the speeding landscape and fixed Owen with an exasperated glare. “If anybody’s got a reason to be having a case of the twitches over a little fresh air and the promise of a remote location, it’s Tosh and Ianto.” 

Ianto turned in his seat, facing his three co-workers wedged into the back of the SUV. “And we’re perfectly fine, for the record. Aren’t we Tosh?”

Tosh caught his eyes, a shared moment of panic flashing between them that Jack saw in the rear view. But she smiled as she looked back at the computer in front of her, nodding. “Absolutely.”

“Right,” Owen muttered, sinking down into the SUV’s plush upholstery with a huff. 

Jack saw the doctor’s reflection literally twiddle his thumbs in the mirror and shook his head. Leaning partially toward Ianto in the passenger seat he asked, “So why don’t we let him bring his iPod along for trips like this again?” 

“Because he sings along, sir.”

“And?”

“And it sounds like someone running over a cat with a steamroller. Slowly.”

“Oi! I heard that.”

**

Three hours and two aborted choruses of “The Bunny Song” later, the SUV rolled into Llanfair Talhaiarn and all five inhabitants of the skulking black vehicle let out a long-withheld sigh of relief. Not because all the buildings and homes and bushy-leaved trees were still standing or that the skies weren’t raining toads, but because it meant they could get out of the blasted car and away from Owen’s griping. Jack stood by the driver’s door, stretching his back until the vertebrae popped and pinged back into alignment, releasing three and a half hours worth of tension while the others filed out into the street in front of the Taylor home. Gwen and Owen were arguing, something about the bruises on her shin and how his toes most likely put them there. Ianto began unloading the equipment from the back, the standard field kits, ready for anything. Tosh stood a few feet from the SUV with a gadget in hand, taking readings. 

“No unusual radiation or isotope readings,” she said, sweeping the gadget outward around her in a tight arc. “None that we can pick up, I should say.” 

“It’s kind of quiet,” Jack said, sinking into a lean against the car’s bumper.

“Small villages usually are.” Gwen stepped up beside him, reaching down to rub at the abused part of her shin. “That’s the appeal, for some.”

Ianto shook his head as he set the equipment boxes on the ground by Gwen’s feet. “That’s not it. If the whole town’s under attack, like the call said, shouldn’t there be, I don’t know, noise? Screaming? Something.” 

“Maybe the whole town’s dead already,” Owen said. He was keeping as far from Gwen as he could manage. “A lot can happen in three hours.”

“That’s what I love about you, Owen. Always so optimistic.” Jack pushed himself up with a half-hearted groan and nodded toward the house. “Come on. Might as well start at the beginning.”

Alwyn Taylor lived on the outskirts of Llanfair, far enough out that the thirty-odd pheasants he raised for butchering didn’t have a neighbor to bother. His house was a simple two-story affair covered in chipped white paint and aggressive vining plants that curled around the porch posts and slithered up the outer walls. The front lawn presented a similar image, with the grass kept just under “too tall” enough to keep people from complaining but lacking the manicured appearance of the homes the team had passed on their way through town. And there were hidden dangers lurking in the overgrowth, as Ianto’s foot discovered when it collided with a broken garden rake that sent him tumbling. None of it screamed neglect so much as disinterest – in its upkeep, in its appearance, in the face it presented to the rest of the world. 

The screen door was open and swinging now and then if a breeze hit it right. Despite the sense of disarray present all around it, the state of the door didn’t set right with Jack. He pulled the Webley from its holster but kept the gun against his thigh, ready and waiting should it be needed but not cocked with his finger twitching on the trigger. 

“Keep an eye out,” he said over his shoulder, catching Ianto’s eyes long enough to give his lover the “you especially” look that was the source of so many of their arguments. When Ianto’s eyebrow cocked on the verge of complaint, Jack’s eyes shot back in the direction of the rake and dared a response. There was none.

Which just made it all the more ironic when Jack nudged the screen door further open with his foot and stepped right into a cricket bat aimed solidly for his head.

**

“…said put the gun away, Owen! You’ll give him a heart attack!”

“He hit the Captain!”

“In the head! Not a denser thing on this planet than Jack’s skull, they’ve done tests!”

Shouting. That’s the first thing Jack heard as he started to come to. Gwen and Owen were shouting at each other – nothing new there. Toshiko was trying to shout over both of them to get them calm and rational. Oh, Jack pitied her that job, he truly did. There was also other, less coherent shouting – less coherent because it wasn’t in English and was just this side of frantic. The only sense of calm, the only voice not raised and panicked and throbbing through Jack’s head, was a soft, familiar baritone shaping perfection out of guttural vowels and oddly strung together consonants. 

Welsh. Someone was yelling in Welsh and Ianto was almost cooing in it in return. If his head wasn’t throbbing and 3/5ths of his team wasn’t screaming it would almost be nice to wake up to.

“Owen,” Jack said and noticed that even the vibration of his own voice in his head hurt. 

The doctor knelt to Jack’s left and pried his eyes open without much in the way of finesse. Bright light flashed across Jack’s vision and he tried to slap the source away. “Aren’t we feisty for somebody had their head smashed in?”

Jack grabbed a handful of Owen’s collar and pulled him down within an inch of his nose. “Douse the light before I give you a firsthand glimpse of what an alien probing feels like with it,” he growled. Owen twisted the cap until the light winked out and Jack’s fingers loosened their hold on his shirt.

“Fine, see if I care whether your brain’s swelling in your skull and waiting to burst. Not like it would last long even if it did burst. Don’t know why I bother patching you up anymore…”

“He’s just in a snit because we wouldn’t let him shoot an 80 year old pensioner,” Gwen said as she offered Jack a hand up, which the Captain took gladly. 

“With a cricket bat.”

“Not starting that again!”

“Shut it!” Jack jabbed a finger at Tosh, Owen, and Gwen while he tried to get his bearings. There was a lump the size of his elbow on his forehead and he could feel dried blood on the side of his face. He was standing in someone’s living room – the aforementioned pensioner, he guessed – which wasn’t in much better shape than the outside of the home had been. As he made a slow, off-kilter turn in place, he took in the ash-filled fireplace, the dust-covered mantle, the faded afghan tossed over a time-beaten couch. And, slumped in an equally time-beaten armchair just to the couch’s left was a pale, shaking man, at least 80 years old (and that was probably an underestimate) still clutching the cricket bat. Ianto was poised on a settee in front of Jack’s assailant, looking absolutely calm. He may as well have been carrying on a chat about the weather. 

“Except you,” Jack said, again jabbing his finger but this time in the direction of Ianto and the old man. “You talk. Now.”

“This is Alwyn Taylor,” Ianto said. “Doesn’t speak much English and even less when he’s upset. He thought we were criminals, or worse.”

“What’s worse than criminals?” Jack asked, feeling some of Ianto’s calm seep through the throbbing in his skull.

“The townspeople, apparently. Seems most of this trouble today is, inadvertently, Alwyn’s fault and the people who aren’t hiding have made sure to stop by and let their thanks for it be known. Hence…” Ianto gestured at the bat still wrapped in Alwyn’s fingers.

“And by trouble you mean – “

“Reanimated pheasants.”

Jack blinked. He thought he’d heard everything. “You’re joking.”

“Even I’m not that creative, Jack.”

Apparently, Jack had been wrong.

**

It all started, according to Alwyn, with a debt and a bag of grain.

Two years past, Alwyn had loaned money to the butcher that dressed his pheasants for sale. They were friends and the butcher had a spot of trouble and Alwyn did what anyone would do for a friend – offered to help. The terms of the loan had been simple: the butcher would pay him back when he could, how he could, and that would be good enough. Alwyn, it seemed, was just the sort of man who was better at taking care of others than himself. Which explained the house.

Fast forward eighteen months. The butcher comes to Alwyn’s house with a large bag of grain. Times had begun to look up for the butcher so he felt capable of paying his friend back and, given Alwyn’s business and the rate his birds went through feed, thought it would be nice to pay him back in something useful. The butcher didn’t mention he’d bought the grain off a rushed, shady salesman selling it off the back of his lorry or that he’d gotten it for a steal. And Alwyn, loyal, trusting Alwyn, didn’t ask questions. Never would’ve had reason to except for today. 

“They butchered earlier this week,” Ianto explained as he came out of the small kitchen, carrying a cup of tea for Alwyn and an icepack for Jack. “People bought the birds, took them home, started cooking them, and…Night of the Living Pheasant.”

“Except it’s daytime,” Owen added from his spot on the couch. “And they were already living before they cut their heads off and tore their insides out. More like Day of the Living Dead Pheasant.”

“Thank you for the crash course in semantics, Owen.” 

“Hey, resident zombie here. Think that makes me an expert.”

“Fine. You and Ianto can argue over what to call them when you write the report.” Jack winced as the towel-wrapped ice was pressed to his forehead. Ianto looked sympathetic for a whole second before abandoning Jack for his assailant. “Any idea what’s in the feed?”

“It’s not so much what’s in it,” Tosh said, looking down at the laptop positioned across her knees. “According to the sample I took from what was left of the bag, it’s mostly just your standard grain.”

“So what does it have to do with – “

“It’s made up of standard grain,” Tosh continued. “Or started out that way, that is. Somewhere along the line it was exposed to low-level radiation, though. And the birds were then exposed to the same radiation, through the grain, when they ate it, causing a mutation.”

“What sort of radiation?”

“Nothing terrestrial.” Tosh’s face brightened suddenly with realization. “I wonder if this is related to that meteor landing a few months back? The one at the granary just outside Cardiff?”

Gwen leaned across Owen to get a look at Tosh’s screen. “I thought the grain was confiscated for possible contamination.”

“Looks like somebody made it out with a few bags and decided to profit a little. Harmless, really. Nobody was going to miss them, they were on their way to be destroyed.” Jack shrugged. “If it wasn’t for the fact the stuff’s bringing things back from the dead, nobody would care.”

“The good news,” Tosh said, looking up from her screen again, “is this stuff has a really short half-life. Few days and the birds go back to being dead, no worse for wear.”

“Bad news of course being that they need to be rounded up before someone makes the mistake of eating one of them and we find out what the stuff does when it’s ingested by humans.”

Tosh grinned and threw a paperclip at Jack. “There you go, taking away my silver lining.”

Owen raised his hand. “So what you’re saying is, we get to go gather up thirty half-cooked, headless, irradiated birds.”

“Yup,” Jack said.

“I hate my life.”

“You and me both.”

**

Despite logic pointing to the idea that pairing up Gwen and Owen was riddled with insanity and a very real possibility of bloodshed, Jack sent them off to cover one part of town while he and Ianto took the other. Tosh, armed with a reading from the sampled grain and an augmented sensor that sought out similar radiation signals, stayed at the house with Alwyn and directed the two teams from there. Jack made sure she was armed before they left, just in case any of the old codger’s neighbors decided to stop in again.

Owen and Gwen headed for the blips gathered to the west under the auspices that it looked like a smaller collection of birds. Jack and Ianto took the easterly migrating contingent and Jack really, really hoped the damn things hadn’t discovered a way to become airborne. Tracking a bunch of irradiated fowl on foot through Northern Wales was one thing. Having to track them by air would be a nightmare. Could end up anywhere that way. Jack all but shivered at the thought. Two dozen plus irradiated birds falling out of the sky and landing in someone’s lap, just in time for Sunday dinner.

“I can’t believe I’m searching the bloody countryside for undead poultry,” Owen said over the comms, both disbelief and disgust in his voice. 

“Look at it this way,” Jack said. “At least you’re getting some fresh air and a good stretch of the legs.”

“I’d rather have a fresh pint and a good pair of legs stretched a-“

“Noted,” Ianto interjected, rolling his eyes. The gesture said “Typical Owen” without having to waste a syllable and Jack had learned to read those eyerolls well over time. Learned as a survival instinct, mostly. Sometimes the only warning he got of Ianto’s mood was the lazy sweep of his eyes skyward.

“How’re you holding up?” Jack asked, as much to fill the companionable silence as to eke out the answer. 

“I’m not the one that took a cricket bat to the forehead, sir.” 

“Yeah, but like Gwen said.” Jack rapped his knuckles against his head, albeit it not the side still sporting the goose egg. “Hard as a rock.”

“Won’t get an argument from me on that one,” Ianto said as he stopped to check the reading. Roughly twenty green dots flickered on one edge of the display screen on his PDA. “Still due east, by the looks of it. Not moving too fast. Wouldn’t, would they, without feet.”

Jack stopped behind Ianto, a hand on each of the other man’s hips holding him, for the moment, still and nearly flush against the Captain. “Not the only part of me that’s known for being hard as a rock.” 

Ianto’s rolled his eyes, this time in amused exasperation, as he pried himself loose of Jack’s hold and turned to face him. “Irradiated fowl on the loose, remember? I’d think it would be a bit more prudent to tuck your libido away for an hour or so, sir, until we’ve managed to save the populace from radiation poisoning?”

Jack snapped his fingers, still grinning. “The fate of the world’s always getting in the way of my fun.”

“I’m sure disaster strikes just to impede your ability to have a good time.”

“So, since we can’t indulge my Id or my sexual appetite and the Zombie Chickens from Outer space – “

“Technically, only the grain came from outer space.”

“-are still a bit ahead,” Jack said, undeterred, “why don’t you go ahead and answer that question you so neatly avoided a minute ago. How are you, Ianto?”

Ianto stopped mid-stride, his exasperation far less amused than before. The hard edge of determination in his eyes should have been a warning to Jack: Fit of temper imminent. Change your tack accordingly. Danger. Danger Will Robinson.

“I’m fine. Perfectly capable of fulfilling my duties without being coddled like a frightened six year old. So you can put the kid gloves away, Jack.”

Before the emphasis on the last word could sink in, Ianto stomped off, jerking his arm out of Jack’s grasp when the Captain tried to stop him.

They walked on in silence for several minutes, Jack dawdling a few steps behind while Ianto crunching through the underbrush, focused on the device in his hand. The low-level beeping that came from it grew more and more frequent as they walked. The birds, if they could be called that anymore, weren’t far off at all. In fact, after a moment’s observance of the readings, Ianto eschewed the silent treatment long enough to inform Jack the targets seemed to have stopped.

“Looks like a pond or a lake. Some kind of water source,” Jack said as he examined the map. “Since I doubt they’ve stopped for a drink, I’m going out on a limb and guessing they can’t get across it, whatever it is.”

“It would be a bit hard to swim without legs or wings, sir.”

“Your powers of deduction astound me, Ianto Jones.”

“I do try.”

After a few more minutes, Jack and Ianto found the “pond or lake”. It was a small pool at the end of a winding creek, fed by an equally small and unimpressive waterfall and made partially secluded by a row of bushes the pair took shelter behind. As expected, twenty headless, footless, half-cooked and fidgeting pheasants stood at the edge of the pool, perplexed. Well, Jack assumed they were perplexed. He knew he’d be perplexed if he were headless, half-cooked, and faced with an obstacle he didn’t have a way to cross or a brain to suss out an alternate route with. But then, if he didn’t have a brain, he wasn’t so sure he’d be able to be perplexed either. 

“So, now that we’ve got them cornered, what do you suggest we do?” Ianto asked, head turned to regard the Captain. 

Jack shrugged. “We could wait them out, I guess. I mean, they aren’t going anywhere. Forward progression is blocked and they’d have to get past us to head back the way they came. Unless they’re going to sprout feathers and remember how to fly, I think it’s just a matter of letting the radiation run its course and gathering them up when they’re un-undead again.”

Ianto nodded and settled into a more comfortable crouch, leaned back against a tree behind him. Jack followed suit, glad for the canopy of leaves overhead that turned the bright sunshine into mottled patches of light. The broken shade kept the sun out of his eyes but let pools of warmth soak into his knees, the back of his neck, his cheek. It felt good. Good enough that, if he wasn’t crouched like he was, Jack could probably doze off.

“The opposite of undead is dead,” Ianto said unexpectedly, his thick Welsh vowels cutting through the silence and shaking Jack from his almost-nap.

“Huh?”

“Can’t be un-undead. If you’re not undead, you’re dead.”

“Ah.”

“Or alive, I suppose, but I don’t think that’s currently a possibility.”

“I’m really hoping it’s not.” 

“Life without a head would be a bit difficult, I’d suspect. Hard to function, not having a brain.”

“Most politicians manage, though.”

Ianto didn’t so much laugh, but when Jack looked up he found a smile on the young Welshman’s face. Oh, he didn’t want to smile, Jack could see him fighting the urge just a bit, but it was there. Forgiveness was just on the other side of that reluctant grin, if Jack could take advantage of it.

“Look, Ianto,” he started, reaching for one of his lover’s hands. “I’m sorry. About earlier. I wasn’t trying to coddle and I wasn’t trying to imply that you’re not as capable as the rest of us. I just know this isn’t easy on you, after what happened before. Not for you or Tosh. And I just –“

The rest of the apology was cut off by a screech and something leaping through the brush – something solid and rosemary scented that impacted Jack square in the chest and took him down. When he recovered from the initial shock he found himself half-covered in undercooked, undead fowl, all of which had odd, toothy mouths in the center of what would have been their stomachs. At least six of them had launched themselves at him, slick with glaze and beating at him with stunted wings while they tried to maneuver their gaping maws to get a bite of something other than air. Another four were gathered at Ianto’s feet, squalling unbelievably and hopping on the bony ends of their drumsticks. 

“Shit! They’ve got teeth!” Jack wrestled with the creature closest to his throat, trying to keep it from sinking the needle-like protrusions from its mouth into his jugular. “How the hell do they have teeth?”

“Radiation caused a mutation in the gizzard which resulted in the grit and muscle becoming a mouth-like protuberance that-“

Jack got two hands around the neck-biting Sunday roast from hell and tossed it at the bushes. “Rhetorical!” 

“Right.” Ianto kicked at the crowd of pheasants at his feet, all of which seemed intent on nibbling his ankles, while trying to raise the others on his earpiece. “Owen! Gwen! We’re under attack,” Ianto bellowed. 

“Lemme guess. Toothy bird carcasses?” came the doctor’s reply.

“No, little green men! What do you think?” Jack managed, taking a hand out of the removal attempt long enough to hit the button on his earpiece. 

“Yeah, well, got a few of those ourselves. How come nobody mentioned they had teeth?”

“How about we discuss the inaccuracy of eyewitness statements when I’m not being gnawed on like a giant chew toy!”

“We’ll be on our way soon as we take care of our batch,” Gwen said, her voice, though strained, holding far more calm than Owen’s. “Tosh, feed us their last coordinates.” 

Ianto pulled his weapon from its holster, first swiping it at the pheasant-zombies as a bludgeon. When that didn’t seem to work to detract them and the kicking only served to make them come back all the more ferocious, he clicked off the safety and fired a round at the creature closest.

The fact that it exploded into a gelatinous mess was entirely unexpected.

“Shoot the bastards!” Ianto crowed into his earpiece as he took aim at the next one. Jack already had his Webley out and aimed at the one nibbling at his elbow. The bullet hit and bird turned into a shower of guck.

It took five minutes and more ammo than Jack cared to admit, but all twenty of the pheasants they’d tracked eventually resembled little more than rosemary-scented snot. It covered the ground, the bushes, even the trees, and most of all it covered the two men left standing in the midst of the mess. Whatever the goop was, it was thick and sticky and, while it smelled pleasant enough, felt disgusting, and it was everywhere.

Ianto, armed with a swab and a sample tube, kneeled by one of the bigger puddles of the material. “Tosh is going to want a sample. It doesn’t seem harmful or particularly caustic, but she’ll want to take a look at it.”

Jack was standing at the edge of the pool, staring at the clear water with a look that could only be described as longing. He could smell it, how crystal clear and pure it was, clean and cool, and the urge to dive in was almost overwhelming. No, it was overwhelming, particularly as the sun started to dry the goop into a brittle crust that pulled at his skin and it would feel so good just to get it all off.

Ianto walked up and tapped him on the shoulder, leaving a crack in his revelry – and in the dried goop formed on the shoulder of his coat.

“Did you hear me, Jack? Owen and Gwen finished off their batch. We should head back.”

Jack shook his head. “Something I have to do first,” he said as he toed out of his boots and shrugged out of the greatcoat. Before Ianto could stop him, he made a running dive into the basin.

The water wasn’t cool – it was cold. Cold and bracing enough that Jack gasped out loud and shivered as his head broke the surface. But he didn’t care. He could feel the crust dissolving from his shirt and his hair and his skin, dragged away on the current until there was nothing left of it. Despite the cold and the shock to his system, he grinned at Ianto on the bank. 

“Come on in, the water’s fine.”

“Fine and freezing if your teeth chattering means anything.” Ianto shook his head, arms crossed resolutely over his chest. “Think I’ll stay out here and wait for a nice warm shower, thanks. Besides, you could be contaminating the village’s drinking water with that stuff.”

“You said it yourself, doesn’t seem to be harmful or caustic.” Jack started to work on the buttons of his shirt, wanting rid of it and everything else that stood between him and that crisp, clean water. “And just think, that hot shower you’re dreaming about is three hours away.”

“I don’t fancy catching pneumonia, thanks.”

The blue button-down landed in a wet lump at Ianto’s feet, coating his shoes and trouser legs with spray. A second later, Jack’s white cotton undershirt followed. Naked from the waist up, water sluicing down his skin in tiny rivulets, the Captain knew he presented a tantalizing picture.

He planted both feet on the stream bed and stood, the water hitting him low on his hips and lapping deliciously against his cock with every wave of displaced water in his wake. His fingers fought with his belt and fly, neither too cooperative when wet. Ianto watched the effort with more than casual interest. His eyes seemed unwaveringly focused on Jack’s groin. 

Getting clean wasn’t the need first and foremost on Jack’s mind anymore.

“You know I could keep you warm,” Jack said as he began shoving his trousers and boxers down. Slowly down, taking his time to let his skin adjust to the water’s temperature and let the tease work its way past Ianto’s logic and into that wicked, locked away part of him that Jack loved. It was the part that had no inhibitions, no reservations, and no self-control as far as the Captain was concerned. Which was just how Jack liked him.

Trousers and boxers landed next to the balled up shirts at Ianto’s feet. He looked down at the pile then back at Jack, who was slowly easing his way backwards toward the waterfall. 

“The rest of the team could be here any minute.” It was a weak protest and Jack could hear the surrender in Ianto’s tone.

“Then we’d better hurry,” Jack said. Before Ianto could answer, Jack dove beneath the surface and took off toward the shelter of the small outcropping and the falls. 

When Jack’s head broke the surface, he was enveloped in a cool, shaded tumble of rushing water, the soft roar of it filling his ears. Beneath the outcropping the water covered up to his hips. The rest of him was left to the fall from above and the spring air. A chill ran through him, sparking where each drop of water fell and radiating outward from there. Jack peered through the curtain of water falling around him, searching for Ianto on the bank. All that was left of his lover was a pile of carefully folded clothing and the occasional splash of feet propelling something beneath the water.

Ianto barely got a chance to draw in a breath when he surfaced. Jack was on him before he could brush the water from his eyes, urging Ianto’s lips to part under the onslaught of a probing tongue and raking teeth. The Captain’s hands – large, firm, commanding hands – drew Ianto against him by the hips. Despite the cold, Jack was hot and hard beneath the water. When he brought Ianto against him, felt Ianto moan against his lips, around his tongue, Jack discovered his lover was as well. As Ianto thrust his hips forward, rubbing his cock against Jack’s in a desperate search for friction, Jack pulled his lips away and chuckled, breathless, into Ianto’s hair.

“For somebody who wasn’t too keen on the idea, you sure feel eager,” Jack said, emphasizing “feel” with a hard roll of his hips. 

“Quick, you said,” was Ianto’s reply a second before one of his hands wrapped around both of them beneath the water and stroked, hard. “I don’t relish the thought of getting caught by Gwen again.”

Jack bucked into Ianto’s fist. “If we’re going to play a game of ‘How fast can we get off’ we should at least have your stopwatch.”

“Buy me a waterproof one then,” Ianto growled against Jack’s ear before tightening his grip. “Now shut up and move!”

Your wish is my command, Jack thought as he rolled his hips into another thrust, felt Ianto’s water-slick cock glide against his, felt fingers tighten and pulse around him. There wasn’t time for savoring sensation or teasing his lover (or himself) to the point of madness. There wasn’t time and the longer Ianto gripped him, rocked against him, the less he wanted that time. Pants and moans ricocheted off the rock ceiling, battered against the wall of water surrounding them, mixed into the sound of the torrent beating at the surface of the pool until all Jack could hear was his own voice, breathless and gasping, chanting Ianto’s name over and over again. Ianto. Ianto. God, don’t stop, Ianto.

Both men’s thrusting became frantic; wild, staccato jerks without rhythm or depth. Jack stiffened first, arched into Ianto with a guttural cry as he came. Ianto followed soon after and both men sank against each other, breathless and spent. Ianto’s forehead fell into Jack’s shoulder. The Captain pressed his lips to Ianto’s hairline, then trailed soft kisses to his lover’s ear. His voice was a weak laugh.

“That almost makes up for getting attacked by reanimated livestock.”

“Just almost?”

“You didn’t have one of the bastards trying to gnaw through your fly.”

Ianto chuckled against Jack’s neck. “All right, point taken. I promise to make it up to you more later.”

“Oi! Harkness!” Owen’s voice sounded muffled through the water rushing down from the falls, but Jack still recognized it and groaned. “This is just your fair warning: you and Ianto might want to put your hands above water like respectable folk, because you’ve got company.” Two splashes radiated from the other side of the falls followed by a woman’s high-pitched shriek. Jack peered through the cascade and saw Gwen and Owen surfacing. 

“Splash war?” Jack asked, a wicked flicker roaring to life in his eyes. Ianto nodded and grinned. 

“You get Owen, I’ll get Gwen. Show no mercy.”

Jack and Ianto broke from the cover of the waterfall, roaring as they swam for their teammates. Gwen screamed as the first wave of water hit her from Ianto’s assault. Owen laughed – until Jack hit him straight on with a splash of his own. Then it was hard to tell which splash belonged to who anymore.

 

Toshiko sank down onto a goop-free rock by the bank, shaking her head as she watched chaos bloom. Everyone was smiling. Happy. It was such a rare thing to see, an unusual few moments of peace for a team used to discarding personal happiness in favor of “the Greater Good” on a daily basis. It felt, for a moment, like heaven.

Of course, Tosh realized, she was just this side of left out of the fun, which she needed to remedy soon. Something twisted up her grin a second later as an idea struck, the sort of idea that would make Jack proud and Ianto blush (and Owen and Gwen furious, but it was worth it). She pushed up from the rock, careful not to make too much noise or draw any attention to herself, and began gathering bits of discarded clothing from the ground. Shoes and socks she left behind – running back to the SUV without those could be painful, after all – but everything else was carefully rolled up inside Jack’s coat, which was turned inside out so Tosh didn’t have to touch the dried goop clinging to the old wool. 

She’d made it a quarter of a mile when she heard Owen yell “Where the hell have our clothes gone!” As she started running flat out in the direction of the SUV, she could’ve sworn she heard Jack laughing.


End file.
